Bill Gates says that ultimately, cellphones will kill the iPod as they invade its music-playing market. It’s possible, but three big things have to happen first:
1) Storage: Cellphones need as much storage capacity as an iPod. Don’t point to a 512 mb cellphone and say that’s going to get me to ditch my iPod; anything less than 10 gb isn’t going to budge me. Realistically, it’s anything less than 30 gb, since that’s the size I’ll be going to when my present iPod needs to be replaced. And don’t tell me I don’t need storage capacity because all my music will be streamed; first, I want my music on there, and second, I listen to a lot more than music. I want my podcasts and audio books on there, and for that, I need capacity, and a lot of it. Oh, and you’d better support MP3s.
2) Fast syncing: If I’ve got the space, then I need a fast pipe to get the data on there. Give me either USB 2.0 or Firewire, or don’t even waste my time by talking to me.
3) An interface Want to know why everyone’s not walking around with a PDA cellphone despite years of tech execs clamoring about convergence? It’s the interface stupid; what works for a phone rarely works for a PDA, and I’m willing to be it’ll suck just as badly for an MP3 player.
Get the storage thing under control, enable fast syncing, and give me a kick ass interface, and I might consider ditching my iPod for your product. I’ll consider it even more if the name of your company is “Apple”.